


invisible string

by o_aphrodite



Series: Harley Quinn/Poison Ivy Week (2020) [1]
Category: Batman: The Animated Series
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Arkham Asylum, Brief Solitary Confinement, F/F, Family Planning, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Pining, Pre-Romantic Relationship, Sweet and soft, Yearning, harlivyweek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:14:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25821238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/o_aphrodite/pseuds/o_aphrodite
Summary: Ivy's back at Arkham, and Harley's the last to know.
Relationships: Pamela Isley/Harleen Quinzel
Series: Harley Quinn/Poison Ivy Week (2020) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1873516
Comments: 4
Kudos: 86





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**Author's Note:**

> This takes place after the events of House and Garden in B:TAS, in which Ivy creates a family out of plant/human hybrids. But I also reference Holiday Knight and Girls Night Out because I love those episodes (and I've chosen to ignore the show's chronology).

Ivy’d been back at Arkham for three days before Harley even realized. Recidivism was Arkham’s bread and butter (no, really; in the brief time Harley spent as its up-and-coming psychotherapist, most of her time was eaten by grant-writing, so she knew better than anyone where the money came from, and it wasn’t all Brucie Wayne), but it was unlike Harley to miss welcoming _Ivy_ back to their home away from home.

But, according to the gossip traded during movie night, Riddler’d seen her when she’d been brought in from intake, and Penguin’d seen her and, hell, even Calendar Man’d seen her. It felt like _everybody’d_ seen her but Harley, and that wouldn’t do.

“Oh? You didn’t know?” Livewire, a visiting resident waiting to be collected by the Metropolis capes snickered, her voice carrying a scorching edge although the power dampening collar sat firmly around her neck. “Too bad. Here I thought you two were besties.”

“We _are_ ,” Harley hissed. Two Face turned from his front-row seat to shush them, and Harley stuck out her tongue. “If ya gonna shush anyone, ya better shush them too,” she spat.

“All of you, hush!” a guard shouted from where he slouched against the steel-reinforced entrance to the recreation room. Despite his bark, he looked just as bored as the rest of them, and no wonder. This was the sixth time they’d shown Groundhog Day that month. Harley liked a good comedy as much as the next clown, but it’d only been out for a year and she was already sick of it.

Or maybe it wasn’t the movie making her feel like she’d swallowed her mallet. Maybe she felt a little rejected, thinkin’ that Ivy was back and hadn’t reached out. There were limitations when they were in lockup, sure, but Ivy _always_ reached out. Even when Mistah J was around, Ivy’d choke him with a leaf of his lettuce at lunch or there’d be a rose waitin’ on Harley’s cot.

If Ivy was hidin’ from Harley, that was just fine; Harley knew better than anyone how to get a little attention. If _Arkham_ was keeping them apart? Then Harley didn’t mind crackin’ a few skulls.

“Hey, what gives?” Harley snapped at a weary guard the next day out in the yard, when Ivy was nowhere to be found. The guard blinked blearily.

“Excuse me?” he huffed.

“Ivy ‘n’ I are always placed next t’each other,” Harley crossed her arms. “ _Always_. But suddenly, outta nowhere, your appallingly second-rate shit show of an asylum’s got us all turned around!”

The guard frowned. “Hey,” he said. “We’re not _that_ bad— _you_ used to work here.”

“I was straight outta my residency, I would’ve taken any payin’ psych job that gave me the time of day,” Harley sniffed. “’Sides, Arkham’s like a spoiled man who can’t pick up after himself or talk commitment; every _real_ adult thinks they can fix ‘im.”

The guard pursed his lips. “Commitment’s a pretty big step for a lot of men—” he began, and so Harley slammed her heel into his instep with the strength of an accomplished gymnast-turned-crime-fiend. Arkham correctional officers were issued steel-toed boots, but they hadn’t quite figured out the _tops_ of feet.

“Ow!” he shouted, doubling over and scrabbling for his radio.

“Serves ya right,” Harley muttered, even as more guards converged on the scene.

She spent the night in solitary, but it didn’t feel any different from being separated from Red anyway. (Harley’d written her very first peer-reviewed publication on the inhumanity and inefficacy of solitary confinement on incarcerated individuals. The irony didn’t escape her; irony was a mainstay of comedy, after all.)

When they brought her out, they took her straight to visitation, where the big man Bruce Wayne himself waited from across the bulletproof plexiglass. He never appeared all that bulky beneath his suits, but he looked uncomfortably large in Arkham’s flimsy folding chairs.

Harley scowled.

“And whaddya want?” she barked into the no-dial phone secured to the table. A gift from Bruce Wayne himself; before, inmates had to shout at their visitors through the plexiglass.

He was charitable, sure, but that didn’t explain why he’d asked for _her_. She’d known he’d taken an interest in her case file, ever since she and Ivy’d wrung him dry that Christmas, but he’d never been so bold as to _visit_ before.

“I wanted to check-in,” Bruce said, his usually flippant tone exchanged for one of solemnity. Even he had the decency to act right where it counted, Harley guessed.

“I don’t need ya to check-in on me,” Harley snarled.

Bruce shrugged and offered an easy smile. “Then consider it me checking in on my investment. I’ve put a lot of money towards Arkham, you know, and I’d rather hear first-hand accounts from patients than rely solely on the third-party company we’ve hired to evaluate the in-patient care here.”

Harley rolled her eyes, and his smile faltered. She propped her chin on her hand and said, “It’s a damn shithole, same as always. Nothin’s changed, and nothin’s gonna change. I dunno where your money’s goin’, but it sure ain’t goin’ into the digs here.”

There was somethin’ familiar about Brucie Wayne’s frown, but Harley couldn’t quite pin the what or the why. It wasn’t quite the grimace he’d put on when she’d robbed him with Ivy, and there was a troublin’ sincerity she didn’t like on a man so tacky. “And it’s definitely not goin’ towards behavioral therapy tools like the ones I recommended to the warden back when I got paid to be here.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, Ms. Quinzel,” Bruce said, ever the gentleman. And normally, Harley’d like a gentleman to come around, but not when she was still so torn up over Ivy disappearin’ on her.

“That’s not even the half of it,” Harley said, her tongue loose after a night in a lonesome cell the size of her Gotham City apartment’s closet. “They’ve must’ve moved Ivy or somethin’. I haven’t even seen her for days. ‘Course I spent last night in solitary, but even before that—”

“They put you in solitary?” Bruce interrupted, terse and loud; loud enough that Harley couldn’t help an involuntary flinch. His eyebrows furrowed and he relaxed in his seat. “I’m sorry. That was rude of me. I was under the impression that they were… transitioning away from the practice of solitary confinement.”

“Ya don’t need practice when you’re as good at somethin’ as Arkham is at failin’ vulnerable populations,” Harley huffed. He didn’t laugh and she crossed her arms. “It doesn’t matter anyway,” she announced, grasping for levity. “Ivy’ll have me outta—oh. Right.” She deflated in her chair. “Unless she really is avoidin’ me.”

Bruce’s frown sunk into that familiar grimace. “I’d rather you _not_ tell me any untoward plans you may have with Ms. Isley. But…” he sighed, and pinched the bridge of his nose, “… solitary confinement is unacceptable. I’ll look into it.” He scraped his chair back and stood. He really was a towerin’ hulk of a man. “Thank you for your time, Ms. Quinzel. I will ensure you’re returned to your room.”

“Wait!” Harley scrambled to her feet, clingin’ to the phone against her ear. “I don’t want ta go back ta my room, have them put me next to Ivy again! It ain’t right to separate me from her, she’s most o’ my support network here anyway, and if you give a damn about mental health in criminal justice, then you know keepin’ us separate is just plain cruel.” She poked out her lower lip for good measure.

“You two enable each other—” Bruce began, but Harley scowled.

“I’m not above startin’ a prison riot,” she warned. Bruce closed his eyes.

“Fine,” he said. “I’ll see what I can do. And _please_. It’s a mental institution, not a prison.”

Turns out, with a little money, a guy can do a lot. Within the hour, Harley was escorted to a new cell, one floor above, and three to the left of her old one. Even just approachin’ it, Harley could feel the tell-tale rise in humidity.

“Red?” she beamed. “Red, I’ve missed you somethin’ fierce!” Harley crowed. She tried to peer into Ivy’s cell, but the guards roughhoused her into her own. “Red?”

There was a beat, and then an uncharacteristically soft, but unmistakably honeyed, smoky voice murmured, “Not now, Harls.”

Ivy didn’t sound great, but that was okay. Harley wasn’t in tip-top shape either. As often as Ivy’d waited for Harley to come around, Harley’d show her she could do the same. What was it Ivy said once? The patience of a redwood?

Harley pressed her back to their shared wall and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And after twenty minutes, she was bored out of her damned mind.

“Hey, Red?” Harley said, breakin’ the silence that felt as heavy as a wool sweater in July. “Wanna hear a joke? It’s about an oil company exec, but don’t worry, the punchline’s killer.”

Through the wall, Harley thought she might’ve heard a sigh as if Ivy were pressed up against the wall the same as Harley.

“You know, I kind of missed your jokes,” Ivy murmured.

“Yeah?” Harley chirped. “And where’ve ya been, anyways? I miss you too, ya know. When you’re not around. And I feel like you haven’t been around very much.”

“I’m—I’m going through something right now, Harley. I can’t always be there when you—”

“No, I mean,” Harley interrupted, “I mean before that. On the outside. I wanna hear about your life, what you’ve been up to, how you’ve been since I saw ya last. You don’t have to tell me everything, but I’d like ta know _somethin’_.”

“I—” Ivy paused. “It’s hard, Harls. It’s—I… I thought I had something I wanted, but it didn’t last.”

Harley sighed, long and hard. She knew what _that_ was like, better than most. “Yeah? I’ve been there.”

“You—yeah. I guess you have,” Ivy muttered. Harley’s eyebrows rose.

“Is that _gossip_ I hear?” Harley crowed. “Pammy, was there a _man_?” Harley never took Ivy as the type to get all tangled up over a man, but Harley also hadn’t thought Ivy cared for men at all. She always seemed so married to her homicidal aspirations; Harley admired it about her. Harley admired a lot about Ivy, and Harley knew _that_ was a dangerous game to be playin’ with a bestie.

“No, of course not, don’t be stupid,” Ivy scoffed. The disgust in her voice felt good, and Harley savored the relief that tingled down her spine like a jolt from Livewire. “But—” Ivy hesitated again. Harley wasn’t used to Ivy bein’ so coy. “That’s what makes it so—so _infuriating_. I had what I wanted, and I had it on _my_ terms. I had a family, and a home, and a garden, and there wasn’t a man to muck it all up until _Batman_.”

Harley hummed. She knew about that too. She knew about Batman, of course, but she also knew about building an entire life in her mind’s eye, preparin’ to settle down, findin’ a fragment of peace underneath the red-soaked skies of Gotham, only to have it all fall apart as if it were built on a house of cards and not the longings of a woman who surely deserved a break every now and again.

“It’s not all a wash,” Harley murmured, leaning her head against the wall, and closing her eyes. “I don’t really know what all happened, but we won’t be here for very long. And when we get out, we’ll find a bigger, better apartment than last time. Someplace real nice, someplace that gets sun, and you can have a greenhouse in it if you want. Bud and Lou have to come too, but I’ll teach ‘em to leave the plants alone and they’ll get it eventually, they’re smarter than ya think.”

“Oh?” Ivy mused.

“Yeah, _oh_. And maybe it’s not whatcha had, but I can _promise_ I won’t let a man, not even Batman, get in the way. Not anymore, that’s all long behind me.”

“Those are some big promises, Harls,” Ivy said with a playful lilt to her voice. “Do you really think you can put your money where your mouth is?”

“Cross my heart, and send Bats to die,” Harley promised, draggin’ her fingers across her chest, over her heart, even if Ivy couldn’t see. “It’ll be you and me against the world, Red. Maybe that’s how it was always meant to be.”

“You know I won’t stop pursuing ecological preservation, restoration, and exaltation,” Ivy warned. “I’ve got plans, Harls.”

“I like your plans,” Harley said. _I like_ you, she wanted to say. “And I like dunkin’ executives in boiling vats of their own palm oil. ‘Member when we did that? It was our best Earth Day yet.”

Ivy hummed. “I don’t know about best, but it was certainly… _memorable_.”

They fell into a contemplative silence, but it wasn’t like before. There was a comfort in this kinda silence; it was the sort of stillness that felt _easy_ and _safe_ in a way that very few things did in their lines of business.

“And what if I want more, Harls?” Ivy finally murmured, so quietly Harley could scarcely hear. “What if I want _children_? I’m still working on my formula, but I’m so close. I’m so close to being able to—they’re like me, Harley, and when I’m done, they’ll be _stable_ , and they’ll grow and develop like children _should_. It could—it’s _going_ to happen. I’m going to make it happen.”

Harley sat up. “Ya know, I always thought that Mistah J and I—I’ve always wanted kids too, ya know. I get it. I really, really get it. Whatever happens, I’m by your side, Red. Thick and thin, kids or sprouts. And if they like Miracle Grow instead of animal crackers, who am I ta judge?”

Ivy snorted. “You’re really something else, Harls.”

“One of a kind,” Harley promised. “What’re you gonna name them? When it happens?”

“I don’t know,” Ivy said. “Something… botanical, herbaceous, and verdant. What would you suggest?”

“I dunno about verdant,” Harley said. “But I’ve always liked the name Lucy, for a little girl.”

“Lucy,” Ivy repeated. “It's not what I had in mind. But I like it.”

***

_I like you._


End file.
